French far-right leader Marine Le Pen softened her tone as she answered questions from judges in Paris during her appeals trial, but denied any wrongdoing after being banned from public office due to a conviction for misusing European Union funds.
Le Pen, the longtime leader of the far-right National Rally, faces a key appeal trial that will decide whether she can run in the 2027 presidential election, after she was given a five-year ban from running for public office last year, effective immediately, Reuters reports.
Le Pen and the other defendants were found guilty of embezzling more than four million euros in EU funds. Judges said that between 2004 and 2016, they used funds intended for work in the European Parliament to pay collaborators who were actually working for the party.
In answering questions from Judge Michel Agy, Le Pen stuck to legal arguments, unlike her previous approach of questioning the legitimacy of the charges. However, her defense appears essentially unchanged, as she denied that there was a system within the RN to misuse European money.
"I explicitly dispute the idea that there was some kind of system," Le Pen said.
She also partially shifted some of the responsibility to her father, the late Jean-Marie Le Pen, stating that until 2014, he was the one who actually made the key decisions. The founder of the RN, formerly the National Front, known for his xenophobic, anti-Semitic and racist views, died last year at the age of 96.
"The way things worked wasn't ideal – I'm aware of that," she said. "But all those people worked."
The trial is expected to last until February 12th.
The verdict is expected before the summer, meaning Le Pen still has a chance to run in 2027 if her five-year ban is lifted or significantly shortened.
If she is unable to run, it is expected that her protégé, the thirty-year-old president of the RN party, Jordan Bardella, would replace her.
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